Delhi High Court granted bail to Khurram Parvez in an NIA case registered under UAPA.
The court set aside a December 2024 trial court order that had denied him bail.
Parvez argued there was no evidence linking him to terror funding or banned terrorist organisations.
The Delhi High Court on Wednesday granted bail to Kashmiri human rights activist Khurram Parvez in an alleged terror funding case investigated by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), after he had spent more than three years in custody.
The ruling marks a significant development in a case in which the NIA has accused Parvez of links to a wider Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) network allegedly involved in recruiting Over Ground Workers (OGWs), gathering intelligence on security installations and facilitating terror funding. According to Live Law, Parvez had challenged a trial court order passed on December 17, 2024, which denied him bail.
A division bench comprising Justice Navin Chawla and Justice Ravinder Dudeja allowed Parvez’s appeal against the trial court’s decision.
“We have granted bail, subject to various conditions,” the Bench said while pronouncing the verdict.
A detailed order is awaited.
Live Law reported that Parvez was arrested from Srinagar on November 22, 2021, and was remanded to judicial custody on February 25, 2022, following a series of police custody remands. By the time the appeal was filed on December 19, 2024, he had spent roughly three years and one month in custody.
The NIA has alleged that a network linked to the banned terrorist organisation LeT recruited OGWs, collected intelligence regarding security installations and facilitated terror funding. Although Parvez was not named in the original FIR, he was arrested during the course of the investigation.
According to the charge sheet, the allegations against Parvez include recruiting OGWs for LeT, collecting information regarding the movement and structure of the Army, maintaining links with Pakistan-based terrorist organisations and instigating protests following the killing of Burhan Wani in 2016.
As reported by Live Law, Parvez argued that the prosecution’s case was unsupported by evidence and that he was a “factual stranger” to the larger conspiracy alleged by the NIA.
It was his case that there was no digital evidence showing contact with members of any proscribed terrorist organisation. He also contended that investigators had not collected call detail records regarding an alleged meeting between him and co-accused Muneer Ahmad Kataria.
Parvez further argued that there was no evidence to show that he had passed sensitive military information to any terrorist operative and that there was no allegation linking him to any alleged terror-funding money trail.
Senior Advocate Tanveer Ahmed Mir appeared for Parvez along with advocates Swati Khanna, Raminder Kaur, Md. Imran Ahmad, Shahzad Khan and Kartik Venu.
The NIA was represented by Special Public Prosecutor Rahul Tyagi, along with advocates Priya Rai, Shubham Goyal, Jatin Khatri and Amit Rohila.
(With inputs from Live Law)
